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Man accused of hate crime, murder goes on trial in neighbor's killing

Members of a Tulsa, Oklahoma, family are hoping they will finally see justice after years of feeling the system let them down and ignored their pleas for help to keep a racist neighbor from killing their son.

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Mallory Simon (CNN)
(CNN) — Members of a Tulsa, Oklahoma, family are hoping they will finally see justice after years of feeling the system let them down and ignored their pleas for help to keep a racist neighbor from killing their son.

Stanley Vernon Majors is set to go on trial Monday on hate crime and first-degree murder charges in the death of Khalid Jabara, 37. Majors walked up to the front steps of the family porch and shot and killed Jabara in August 2016, police said.

The Jabara family spoke to CNN in September about the fatal shooting, a killing they say was fueled by hate. It was an violent act the Jabaras say never should have been allowed to happen.

They told police about a barrage of racist taunts coming from next door but said the hate persisted. They got a protective order to keep Majors away but said nothing changed. They complained he wasn't complying -- and then he allegedly ran down Khalid's mother, Haifa, with his car.

Majors would stand on the adjoining property line, their lawn or their driveway or on their quiet Tulsa suburban street and shout that they were "dirty Arabs," according to the Jabara family. He called them "Mooslems," and "dirty Lebanese." He apparently had no idea they were Christians who fled civil war and religious persecution in Lebanon decades ago.

CNN reached out to defense lawyer Richard Koller for comment but has not heard back. Koller, a public defender, declined an interview in September at Majors' request.

The family says Majors should never have been allowed to live next door to them after the years of harassment.

"We are the victims. And we look toward our city officials who are more well-versed in the judicial and criminal system to help protect us. And I feel that didn't happen at all," Khalid's sister Victoria Jabara Williams told CNN last year. "It was just a system failure. And we got lost in the shuffle."

Read more of our in-depth coverage on this case: After a killing driven by hate, family wonders 'How many red flags does it take?'

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